In Passing: 2009, Part I

By Stephanie Star Smith

January 7, 2010

Each year at the Academy Awards, Hollywood takes a few moments to honor those who have joined the Choir Invisible during the previous year. Each year sees a number of people barely recognized even by their industry peers, much less the viewing audience, along with a smaller percentage of more widely-renowned names (and the inevitable few "I didn't know he/she died"). As the calendar year begins anew, we here at BOP would like to acknowledge some of Hollywood's brightest luminaries who shuffled off their mortal coils in 2009 with a look back at the reasons why though they may be gone, they will certainly not be soon forgotten.

Patrick McGoohan

It might surprise many people to learn that the renowned British actor, Patrick McGoohan, was actually born in America, Queens to be exact. His Irish parents had emigrated to the New World to look for work, but shortly after his birth, they returned to their native Ireland, then moved to England when he was seven. Such globetrotting at such a young age provided McGoohan with an accent that isn't readily identifiable as either English or American, yet seems native to the ears of audiences on both sides of the Atlantic.

Patrick McGoohan didn't evince much interest in acting growing up, or if he did, he kept it to himself. Leaving school at the age of 16, he pursued a variety of possible careers including chicken farming, until he got a job as a stage manager at the Sheffield Repertory Theatre. When one of the actors took sick, McGoohan filled in, and thus finally found his true calling. He appeared in a number of productions through the UK, including Orson Welles' York theatre production of Moby Dick Rehearsed, playing the role of Starbuck.

McGoohan made his first foray onto the silver screen under contract to The Rank Organization, the largest European production company from 1930 to 1960. He was signed to the company after having served as a stand-in during the screen tests of actresses Rank was considering, but rather than the boon most actors would have considered a studio contract, McGoohan found it constricting, as he found himself playing roles that relied more on his good looks and his athletic ability, particularly as a boxer, than on any acting skill he might have brought to the party. His constant petitioning of management for better and more varied roles led to the contract being dissolved after only a few films.

McGoohan viewed what many would have perceived as a serious career blow as a positive boon, returning to the stage and also dabbling in television, acting in projects that took his fancy and avoiding playing the same type of roles over and over again. He eventually caught the attention of the Harry Saltzman and Albert R. Broccoli, who were mounting a production of Ian Fleming's James Bond novel, Dr No. But McGoohan saw Bond as yet another role that would rely more on looks and athleticism than talent and turned down the role, preferring instead the artistic freedom he felt stage work provided.

Around this same time, he was also approached by Sir Lew Grade, the legendary British producer, about doing a television series revolving around a secret agent. While McGoohan was intrigued by the prospect, he also wanted to ensure he had more creative control of the project than he had enjoyed whilst under contract to Rank; he told Grade he'd undertake the role, but only if certain conditions were met. He specified that all fistfights throughout the series would be different from one another, that the character would always resort to using his brain before his gun, and that there would be no kissing or other overt sexual congress. Lew Grade agreed, giving McGoohan his first signature role, John Drake in the television series Danger Man. The show premiered in 1961 as a half-hour black-and-white series, initially geared more towards an American audience (it was called Secret Agent in the US), and though it was a hit in the UK, it was less well-received in the States, and so ceased production at the end of the first season. McGoohan returned to the stage and films, appearing in the classic Disney film The Three Lives of Thomasina and an episode of the Wonderful World of Disney TV series, The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh. He was also offered the role of Simon Templar in the TV series The Saint, another possibly-iconic role that he passed up (it went instead to Roger Moore, who also eventually played another role McGoohan had passed on, James Bond).

Although Danger Man hadn't garnered a huge audience when it was first aired, it eventually gained a cult following through reruns shown in several countries, and in 1964, Sir Lew Grade came calling again, asking McGoohan to reprise his role as John Drake. Danger Man was expanded to an hour and shot in color; at McGoohan's behest, the character of John Drake was also written to show more of the actor's range. In its second incarnation, Danger Man/Secret Agent became a hit this time around, lasting for three seasons and making McGoohan the highest-paid actor in Great Britain. At the beginning of the show's fourth season, however, McGoohan had had enough, and told Grade he was going to quit the series. Not wanting to lose such a valuable asset, Grade asked if there was anything else McGoohan would be willing to do for Grade to produce, and as it so happened, McGoohan did have a project in mind: a miniseries about a secret agent who decides to quit the spy business, who then awakens in a prison disguised as a vacation resort. Audiences would later come to know this series as The Prisoner. In keeping with his career-long desire to retain control of his projects, McGoohan was a co-producer on the series; he also wrote and directed several episodes, under his own name and the aliases Joseph Serf and Paddy Fitz.

The Prisoner was utterly unlike anything on television at the time, and the surreal tone of the series stretched the limits of what could be done in the context of episodic television. It also provided McGoohan with his signature role, the one for which he would be known for the rest of his career, and arguably beyond. In later years, however, McGoohan felt the role somewhat constrained him; because the character of Number Six, was so insistent upon the importance of individuality and freedom, any character McGoohan played thereafter that championed such ideals was inevitably compared to his role in The Prisoner. As McGoohan himself once observed ruefully, "Mel Gibson will always be Mad Max, and I will always be Number Six."

After wrapping The Prisoner, McGoohan returned to the stage he loved, and was seen on the silver screen in such classics as Ice Station Zebra, Escape from Alcatraz, Scanners and Braveheart; his last film was a voice role in 2002's Treasure Planet. He also made several TV appearances, including three episodes of his friend Peter Falk's series Columbo, and the Masterpiece Theatre production The Best of Friends, alongside Sir John Gielgud and Wendy Hiller. And he poked a bit of fun at his signature character, reprising Number Six in an episode of The Simpsons called The Computer Wore Menace Shoes. There were also attempts over the years to make a motion picture of The Prisoner , and though McGoohan was attached to one of these as executive producer, none of the projects ever got off the ground. When Patrick Joseph McGoohan passed away on January 13, 2009, the actor left a wide and varied body of work, just as he had always wanted.

Ricardo Montalbán

OK, class, pop-quiz time. What do these three things have in common?

Rich, Corinthian leather.

I am Mr Roarke, your host.

Khaaaaaaaaaaan!!

OK, so that last one is a gimme. Still, the three catchphrases most associated with Ricardo Montalbán also attest to the wide and varied roles he portrayed throughout his long career.

Ricardo Gonzalo Pedro Montalbán y Merino was born in Mexico City to Castilian émigré parents. At the age of 13, Montalbán moved to Los Angeles to live with his older brother, Carlos, also an actor, and in 1940, when Ricardo was 20, the two went to New York to seek their acting fortunes. Montalbán's first role was as a minor character in the play Her Cardboard Lover; shortly thereafter, he began appearing in a series of three-minute musicals for the Soundies film jukeboxes, usually as an extra or a member of the Men and Maids of Melody chorus. He was beginning to get larger roles in these shorts when he learned his mother was dying; he returned to Mexico, and eventually became a star in the Mexican film industry.

When he returned to the US, he decided to try his hand in Hollywood, where, as was often the case in the ‘40s and ‘50s, he was told by the studios he needed to change his name to something like Ricky Martin. Montalbán declined, but his refusal didn't impact his career; he soon joined Fernando Lamas and Cesar Romero as one of Hollywood's Latin Lovers, being cast in a series of comedies and musicals where the starlet has a flirtation with a dashing Latin Lothario before settling down with the staid hero, whilst the Latino apparently heads off to his next flirtation. He was also cast as other ethnicities, including Native American and, strangely, Asian; one of his biggest roles was opposite Marlon Brando in Sayonara. His good looks, sonorous voice, acting range and ability to portray a variety of ethnicities - in the eyes of Hollywood, anyway - led to his being one of the few actively-working Latino actors in the ‘50s and ‘60s, in both film and television. His versatility would keep him working until the end of his life.

Although he had many starring roles in a wide variety of films, including Across the Wide Missouri, The Singing Nun and the afore-mentioned Sayonara, his signature roles arise from the medium of television. The first, and arguably the most well-known, is that of Khan Noonien Singh on the original Star Trek series episode Space Seed. His portrayal of the leader of a group of genetically-enhanced men and women, exiled from Earth, was so memorable that the character became the sole crossover, aside from the series regulars, to make the leap to the big screen. In fact, Wrath of Khan may very well have saved the Trek film franchise, at least as far as fans are concerned, as the Robert Wise first film was, not to put it too finely, a monumental bore and derivative to boot. But as the decidedly-mad superman, grieving his wife's death and laying the blame for every bad thing that's happened in his life squarely on Admiral Kirk's shoulders, Montalbán galvanized the second film, and entered the pantheon of science-fiction's great villains. Didn't hurt that, at what some would consider the ripe old age of 62, he was still smokin' hot; so much so, in fact, that there arose the spurious rumor that Montalbán had a prosthetic chest made so as to look more muscular. Nicholas Meyer, the film's writer and director, laid that particular rumor to rest in interviews, stating that Montalbán was "one strong cookie" and that the revealing costumes were made to accentuate Montalbán's own muscular physique. Montalbán reportedly agreed to reprise the role in Khan in Star Trek II for just $100,000 because he enjoyed the role so much; that joy was transmitted to the audience, making for a thoroughly enjoyable film.

His second famous TV role came in the ‘70s, when he appeared in a TV movie as Mr Roarke , the enigmatic host of a place called Fantasy Island, where for the right price, people could live out their wildest daydreams. Although the original film and its follow-up, Return to Fantasy Island, had Roarke as a somewhat sinister character, by the time the very popular TV movies were turned into a series, Mr Roarke had morphed into someone more benevolent, although the fantasies still never turned out quite how people imagined. The show ran for six seasons, becoming a cultural touchstone and making household names out of Montalbán and his co-star, Hervé Villechaize. Over the course of the series, the role of Roarke was fleshed out; the character began to participate more in the fantasies, and more references were made to his supernatural abilities. These forays into Roarke's character gave Montalbán a chance to flex his acting muscles, and helped to keep the series near the top of the ratings until very near the end of its run.

That Ricardo Montalbán's third TV role remains memorable is a testament to one of his most recognizable traits: his mellifluous, slightly-accented voice. To many people of a certain age, the phrase "rich Corinthian leather" conjures up the sight of a medium-sized car that looked impossibly rich but was actually quite affordable. The fact that the Chrysler Cordoba became a huge success at a time when the company was on the verge of bankruptcy might not have been entirely due to Montalbán's commercials for the car, but they sure as hell didn't hurt; he made the car sound like epitome of luxury and refinement, and the made-up name for a type of leather that didn't exist sounded so desirable in those dulcet tones that a goodly number of drivers likely bought the car for that feature alone (incidentally, although most often remembered and parodied as rich Corinthian leather, the commercials uniformly refer to soft Corinthian leather).

Throughout most of Ricardo Montalbán's career, he was offered a wide variety of roles of varying ethnic backgrounds; however, he noted with dismay that some of the Mexican roles he was offered, and the way in which Mexicans were often depicted on-screen generally, painted his heritage in an undesirable light. In an effort to combat the stereotypes he saw, he joined together with other Latin performers to create the Nosotros Foundation in 1970. Spanish for "we", Nosotros sought to create opportunities for Latinos in the film and television industry, and Montalbán served as its first president; although he admitted in later years that his participation in Nosotros caused him to be viewed in some Hollywood circles as a militant, and that it in fact cost him some jobs, he remained extremely proud of the organization and its success, and continued to work tirelessly to see that Latinos achieved greater success and more opportunity in the performing arts.

Near the end of his life, Montalbán was confined to a wheelchair, the result of a spinal injury suffered during the shooting of Across the Wide Missouri. His confinement did little to slow his acting career, however; he did a number of voice roles, and when Richard Rodriguez wrote the first Spy Kids film, he specifically wrote Montalbán's wheelchair into the role of Grandfather. He completed one final voice role, for the animated series American Dad!, before he died due to complications from congestive heart failure on January 14, 2009.

James Whitmore

James Whitmore owed his acting career to the United States Marines.

An odd statement though that seems on the surface, Whitmore quite literally had his service to thank for his theatre training. Returning home after World War II, he used the benefits he received under the first GI Bill to study acting at the American Theatre Wing, and upon completion of his studies, Whitmore began appearing in regional theatre productions before making his Broadway debut in the play Command Decision. His depiction of Tech Sergeant Evans earned him a Tony award and notice from Hollywood, where he was put under contract by MGM, although he was not invited to reprise his role in the studio's film version of Command Decision (the part went to Van Johnson instead). But Whitmore didn't have long to wait for his first film, co-starring the next year in Undercover Man, opposite Glenn Ford. Success soon followed; his next film, Battleground, which told the story of the real-life 101st Airborne Division during the Battle of the Bulge, would earn him an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor.

Whitmore worked steadily in the movies throughout the next three decades, appearing in such diverse films as The Asphalt Jungle, Kiss Me Kate, Oklahoma!, and Them!; he also starred in an astonishing number of war films, including All the Brothers Were Valiant, Shadow in the Sky, Above and Beyond, and Tora! Tora! Tora!.

Perhaps because of his craggy looks and no-nonsense demeanor, he often portrayed a cop or a military man, with the occasional cowboy and criminal dotting his resumé; as is the lot of most character actors, Whitmore rarely had the lead in films, generally playing a secondary but pivotal role. In 1964, however, Whitmore departed from his usual roles, taking on the lead in Black Like Me, the fictionalized account of John Griffin's real-life odyssey as a white man passing for African American in the Jim Crow-era South. The film was met with as much controversy as the book on which it was based had been, and did not fare well at the box office.

When television came of age in the 1950s, Whitmore made his mark on this new medium, appearing in a number of the live theatre anthologies as well as popular series of the time, including The Twilight Zone, Wagon Train and Ben Casey. In 1961, Whitmore starred in his own series, The Law and Mr Jones, playing the title character, lawyer Abraham Lincoln Jones. But the series lasted only one season, and Whitmore soon returned to guest-starring roles on other series, stage productions, and movies, although his film roles were beginning to become somewhat scarce. In the ‘70s, he began appearing in a series of one-man shows on Broadway examining the lives of famous Americans. The first, Will Rogers' USA, had a long and distinguished run; it was followed by perhaps his most famous one-man show, Give ‘Em Hell, Harry!, wherein he portrayed the 33rd President of the United States, Harry S Truman. The show proved so popular it not only enjoyed an extended Broadway run and nationwide, tour, but it was made into a film in 1975, garnering Whitmore another Oscar nomination, this time for Best Actor. Whitmore appeared in a third one-man show about the life of Theodore Roosevelt, titled Bully, but this show did not have the success of its two predecessors.

Whitmore continued to act well into his later years, with perhaps his most famous film role being the ill-fated prison librarian, Brooks Hatten, in the Oscar-nominated film The Shawshank Redemption. He also appeared on several TV series, including a recurring role on The Practice, which garnered Whitmore an Emmy award for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series. Whitmore was also the spokesman for Miracle-Gro plant food for a number of years, thus tying together his acting career and his favorite hobby, gardening. He made his last acting appearance in an episode of the television series CSI in 2007. He was diagnosed with lung cancer in November of 2008, and passed away on February 6, 2009, leaving behind a rich celluloid legacy.

Horton Foote

Like many denizens of stage and screen, Horton Foote knew at an early age he wanted to become an actor. From the time he was ten, he talked about a stage career, and by 16, had convinced his parents to let him study acting. With their blessing, he traveled from his home in Texas to Pasadena, California, to study at the Pasadena Playhouse. While there, he also began to dabble in writing, theorizing that if he wrote plays, he could assure himself decent parts. After repeatedly receiving better reviews for his writing than his acting, Foote decided he might as well concentrate his artistic endeavors where he had the most success, and took to writing full-time for the stage in the 1940s. Well-regarded almost from the start, he worked steadily on Broadway, writing and producing plays for the rest of the 20th and into the 21st centuries. When Hollywood came calling, as it inevitably seemed to in those days, it was not, as was usually the case, the film studios that clamored for Foote's work, but television; Foote was a major force in the so-called Golden Age of Television, adapting his Broadway plays and writing original works for the live drama anthologies of the ‘50s and early ‘60s.

It is one of the latter that first brought Foote acclaim from Hollywood. His adaptation of Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird for the 1962 film not only received critical praise, but also led to Foote's first Academy Award nomination and win, for Best Adapted Screenplay. This success was soon followed by critically-acclaimed adaptations of Hurry Sundown and Baby the Rain Must Fall, this last adapted from his own play The Traveling Lady. Foote continued to find success in both television and films adapting his own plays and the plays of others, while still creating original works for the stage. And while his films were not always as well-received as To Kill a Mockingbird, his television career flourished, and he was regarded by some in the theatre to be one of the great American dramatists, referred to as both the American Chekov and the rural Chekov.. Foote would see again see motion-picture success in 1983 with Tender Mercies, an original screenplay written for his friend, actor Robert Duvall, although Foote later denied this, claiming it would be "too constraining" to write a part with a specific actor in mind. Duvall, however, contradicted his friend, explaining in interviews that not only had he told Foote he wanted to play a country-western singer, but he even gave character suggestions to Foote during the writing of the film. Whatever the truth of the matter, Tender Mercies went on to earn Foote his second Oscar, and one for Duvall as well. Trivia buffs will note that Duvall also appeared in Foote's first Oscar-winning foray into films, To Kill a Mockingbird; Foote had recommended the actor, whom he had worked with on the stage, for the role of Boo Radley. He received his final Oscar nod for an adaptation of his play The Trip to Bountiful in 1985; this work has the distinction of being produced as a stage play, a television production, and a feature film, with Lillian Gish essaying the role of Carrie Watts on the stage and on TV, and Geraldine Page winning an Oscar for the role in the 1985 film. Foote was also nominated for a third Oscar, but did not win for this outing.

Foote continued to write for the stage and television late into life, receiving more accolades over the years, including the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1995 for his play The Young Man From Atlanta. He adapted the critically-acclaimed 1992 version of John Steinbeck's novel Of Mice and Men, which starred and was directed by Gary Sinise; and wrote a new adaptation of Old Man in 1997, the William Faulkner play he had originally adapted for television in 1958, winning an Emmy for the latter version. He also provided the voice of Jefferson Davis in Ken Burns' seminal PBS series The Civil War, one of his few forays into acting after deciding to devote his talents to writing.

His productivity waned as the first decade of the 21st century wore on; 2001 saw both the production of his last play, The Carpetbaggers' Children, and the second installment of his memoirs, Beginnings. His last production would be a new staging of his play Dividing the Estate, which was first performed in 1989. Horton Foote laid down his pen forever on March 4th.

Ron Silver

For a career as an actor, Ron Silver seems to have taken a route more suited to academia or diplomacy. Born in New York and raised on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, Ron attended the State University of New York at Buffalo and received a BA in Spanish and Chinese; he later acquired a Master's in Chinese History from St John's University and a degree in the subject from the College of Chinese Culture in Taiwan. He also studied at Columbia University's Graduate School of International Affairs...and oh, yeah; he studied acting at the Herbert Berghof Studio. In fact, he hardly seemed destined for an acting career at all in early adulthood; he taught Spanish at a Jewish boarding school in Connecticut, and, thanks to his knowledge of Chinese history and language, took a job with the US government in the early ‘70s. His first acting job was in 1971 on the New York stage; work in films and television quickly followed, beginning with the Rockford Files on the small screen, and Tunnelvision on the silver screen. His notable film roles include Semi-Tough, Enemies: A Love Story, Reversal of Fortune, and Ali; among his TV projects are recurring roles in Rhoda, Wiseguy and The West Wing, as well as portraying Bobby Riggs in the TV movie When Billie Beat Bobby.

Silver was quite active in politics throughout his life; he was once quoted as saying he considered himself more of a politician than an actor caring more about public policy than any acting job. In this light, it is of little surprise that he was founding president of the Creative Coalition, an policy advocacy group drawn from the fields of entertainment and the arts; founder of One Jerusalem, an educational organization with the stated goal of "maintaining a united Jerusalem as the undivided capital of Israel"; and served as the president of the Actors' Equity Association, the stage-actors' union. He was also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, as well as a member of the program committee of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

Although he long called himself a "Democrat in the Harry Truman mold", he broke with the party over its reaction to the September 11th terrorist attacks; thereafter, he registered as an independent, but endorsed George W Bush's self-proclaimed "war on terror" and spoke at the 2004 Republican National Convention. Though he could never point to outright blacklisting, Silver felt that his defection to the Republican side of the aisle cost him some acting roles, not to mention friendships. He wrote in his blog that, when he returned to the set of West Wing for one of his stints as campaign advisor Bruno Gianelli, many of the other actors began chanting, "Ron, Ron the Neo-Con"; though he maintained the whole thing was done in jest, he also felt there was an edge to the proceedings. In the final national election prior to his death, however, he felt John McCain's choice of Sarah Palin as his running mate rendered it impossible to vote for him; he ultimately decided to vote for Barack Obama, thus returning to his Democratic roots.

Ron Silver died on March 15th, due to the esophageal cancer diagnosed two years before.

Natasha Richardson

The Grim Reaper, it seems, rarely arrives at just the right time; it is either seen as appearing too late, or - more tragically - much, much too soon. The latter is the case with Natasha Richardson.

Born into the England's Redgrave acting dynasty, the daughter of Vanessa Redgrave and director Tony Richardson could almost be said to have acting in the blood. Thus it was no surprise that Natasha Richardson made her first foray into the family business at a very early age, playing a very minor role in a new film adaptation of Charge of the Light Brigade directed by her father when she was but four years old.

Having been well and truly bitten by the acting bug, Richardson attended two highly-rated independent first and secondary schools, then embarked on her career path by studying at the prestigious Central School for Speech and Drama. She entered in the theatrical world by appearing in regional theatre in Leeds in 1983, where she played roles in Top Girls and Charley's Aunt. In 1984, she switched up her live acting with a turn for the cameras, taking a lead guest role in an episode of the British television series Oxbridge Blues, as well as a bit part in the American mini-series Ellis Island; the large cast of the latter show also included a young Irish actor named Liam Neeson.

Richardson's first lead role on the London stage was in a 1985 West End revival of Chekhov's The Seagull, for which she received the Plays and Players Most Promising Newcomer award; roles in Hamlet and A Midsummer Night's Dream followed in that same year. She also continued her practice of appearing in a filmed project as a change from the stage, doing an episode of the Granada Television Jeremy Brett Sherlock Holmes series, playing the female lead, Violet Hunter, in The Adventure of the Copper Beeches. She also appeared in a TV movie titled In a Secret State in that same year. The following year, Richardson embarked on (some might consider it a "return" to) a feature film career, with the lead role of Mary Shelley in Ken Russell's Gothic, and 1987 saw her taking a role in A Month in the Country, set in post-World War I Britain. Her portrayal of Mary Shelley caught the attention of renowned American write/director Paul Schrader, who cast her in as the kidnapped heiress in his 1988 docudrama Patty Hearst. She continued to stay busy in films through the remainder of the ‘80s and through the mid-‘90s, doing about a film and/or television show a year; her resumé during this period included the story of the Manhattan Project, Fat Man and Little Boy; Offred, the eponymous caste member in The Handmaid's Tale; the Paul Schrader-helmed relationship movie The Comfort of Strangers, which earned Richardson the London Evening Standard Award for Best Actress of 1990; the TNT TV movie Zelda, in which Richardson played the wife of F Scott Fitzgerald; the thriller Past Midnight and the comedy/crime caper flick Widow's Peak; and a TV adaptation of the Tennessee Williams play Suddenly Last Summer. Her film and television work on both sides of the Atlantic brought her a great deal of critical praise and a slew of awards, not to mention more and more acting work for this tireless performer.

She wasn't idle in the theatre, either, continuing to appear in the West End between, and occasionally during, her film and television work. Most notably, she played Tracy Lord in 1987's High Society, a stage adaptation of the film musical by Cole Porter; and Sally Bowles in the 1997 production of the Sam Mendes/Rob Marshall-helmed revival of Cabaret, for which she won a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actress in a Musical, and Outer Critics' Circle Award and Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical. The following year, Richardson returned to Broadway in the play Closer, for which she was nominated for the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Featured Actress in a Play.

In the 1993 West End revival of Anna Christie, Richardson could be said to have received a prize of a different sort; meeting her future husband, Liam Neeson, who also appeared in the play. She married the Irish-born actor the following year, at the home they shared in upstate New York. Of course, she was also nominated for and won several critics' awards, in both England and America, the London production having traveled to Broadway. She and Neeson appeared the following year in Nell, which also starred Jodie Foster as the titular backwoods girl who never learned English but a family language no one else can understand.

Once Richardson and Neeson started a family - they had two sons, Micheál and Daniel - her career pace slowed somewhat, but she still found time to appear in feature films and on the stage. Her films in the late ‘90s and in the new millennium include a remake of the Disney family comedy The Parent Trap; the bawdy sex comedy Waking Up in Reno; the Jennifer Lopez vehicle Maid in Manhattan; and the harrowing thriller Asylum, for which she was nominated as Best Actress at the British Independent Film Awards, and for which she won a second Evening Standard British Film Awards for Best Actress. Richardson also executive-produced the film. Richardson's final on-screen performance was as the head mistress of a girls' school in the 2008 comedy Wild Child; however, shortly before she passed away, she recorded the off-screen voice for Ruth Mallory, wife of George Mallory, who disappeared whilst making an attempt to climb Mount Everest. The film, The Wildest Dream, was narrated by husband Liam Neeson; director Anthony Geffen has been quoted as saying that listening to Richardson's performance in light of the events leading to her death is "harrowing". Richardson's final stage role was as Blanche DuBois, opposite John C Reilly as Stanley Kowalski, in the Roundabout Theatre company's 2005 revival of Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire.

With her almost-constant acting roles and her young family to care for, it's hard to believe Richardson could find time to do anything else, but when it came to a cause for which she cared deeply, she found the time. After her father, renowned British director Tony Richardson, died of AIDS-related complications in 1991, Richardson became very active in the fight against AIDS. She was a major fundraiser for amfAR, the Foundation for AIDS Research, helping to raise millions for the organization; she received the organization's Award of Courage in November 2000, and become a member of its board of trustees in 2006. In addition to her work with amfAR, she tirelessly devoted time to countless other AIDS charities, including Mothers' Voices, AIDS Crisis Trust and National AIDS Trust, the latter of which she served as an ambassador.

Richardson looked to have a long and decorated career on stage and in film and television when she and Neeson took their two sons on a ski vacation to the Mont Tremblant Resort in Quebec, Canada. During a private lesson there, Richardson fell and struck her head upon the hard snow-pack; as she laughed the incident off at the time, it seemed she'd suffered no injury worse than a slightly-bruised pride, and the paramedics called to the scene at the time of the fall were dismissed as not being needed. Though it was not known at the time, Richardson had suffered an epidural hematoma, a traumatic brain injury marked by a so-called "lucid interval", in which the patient is initially able to go about her life in a normal fashion, only to later fall victim to decreased levels of consciousness and activity; for this reason, neurologists refer to the epidural hematoma as the "talk-and-die" syndrome.

Such was the case with Richardson. Initially refusing medical treatment, she began to complain of a severe headache about an hour after the fall; by the time an ambulance was recalled to the resort several hours later, the actress had lost consciousness. She was rushed to a trauma center in Montreal, where she was admitted in critical condition; she was later air-lifted to Lenox Hill Hospital in New York, where she died on March 18th. On the following night, the theatre lights on Broadway and in London's West End were dimmed as a mark of respect in her honor.

Marilyn Chambers

In the early 1970s, when the sexual revolution was reaching its pe... um, its cli...I mean, its high...point, there was one area that lagged behind the rest of society's newfound openness: the hardcore porn film. This may seem like a bit of a paradox, since, after all, hardcore films are just about sexually-explicit as it is possible for films to get, but for the most part, they existed far outside the public consciousness (save for stag parties, of course). Although pornos had managed to move from illegal-to-view-or-make, amateur affairs to legal, mass-produced professional projects, they were still relegated to the fringes, being shown in shabby theatres in the seediest neighborhoods, and patronized by men - some dirty, some clean; some old, some young - but all of them alone, pleasuring themselves to the grainy images of multiple acts engaged in by anonymous genitalia attached to humanoids amounting to little more than props.

And there the films might have remained were it not for a convergence of events, beginning with the aforementioned sexual revolution. Then the MPAA, when it instituted its ratings system in 1968, responded to the freer attitudes in society in general and included a designation for films of an adult nature; the X rating prevented anyone under the age of 17 from being admitted to the theatre. This, in turn, freed up filmmakers to address more mature themes; the earliest X-rated films, including the Oscar winner Midnight Cowboy, were major studio releases, not hardcore porn films.

The willingness of major studios to create films that were more sexually explicit than before led to the audience being more receptive to such content, setting the stage for what became known as the Golden Age of Porno, and the Porno chic films. These films, while still containing hardcore depictions of sexual intercourse in all its many-splendored variety, had real storylines, good production values and actual acting. Besides in the sex simulations, of course. These improvements gave the pornos mass mixed-audience appeal, resulting in films that were often shown in regular movie theatres, were reviewed by mainstream newspapers, and that achieved box-office grosses matching or even exceeding many major studio films released the same year.

All this is by way of explaining why Marilyn Chambers, an adult-film star, is making an appearance in this year's In Passing. Though the woman born Marilyn Ann Briggs wanted more than anything to forge a career in legitimate films from her porno-chic success, the vast majority of her resumé is hardcore films (with the occasional softcore film for the sake of variety).

Striving to enter modeling while still in high school, but fighting against parental disapproval, Chambers learned to forge her mother's name to notes so she could get out of class and go on auditions in New York, a long bus ride from her home in Westport, Connecticut. She was able to secure some modeling jobs and eventually was cast in a small role in the Barbra Streisand vehicle The Owl and the Pussycat, but she was crestfallen to discover her parents were not impressed with the modest success she'd achieved. Realizing she wouldn't win their approval unless she got some major roles, she moved to Los Angeles after high school, but found little work there; she appeared in just one film, an indie from writer/director Sean S Cunningham. Perhaps foreshadowing her career trajectory, Chambers appeared nude.

Her next stop was San Francisco, where she landed several jobs, including as a topless model and a bottomless dancer. The high point of her modeling career came when she was chosen as the Ivory Soap Girl; pictures of her posing as a mother and cradling a baby, appeared on boxes of Ivory Snow under their famous slogan "99 and 44/100% pure." In 1972, Chambers saw a newspaper ad about an open audition for the lead role in an upcoming film; upon arriving at the audition, however, she discovered it was for a porn film and was about to leave when the film's producers, the successful adult theatre-chain owners the Mitchell Brothers, complimented Chambers on her resemblance to Cybil Shepherd. Flattered, and eager for what would be her first lead role, Chambers agreed to audition for the film, Behind the Green Door. The Mitchell Brothers liked what they saw, and Chambers found the script to have more of a plotline than she imagined, so the deal was struck. After filming was completed, Chambers told the Mitchells that she was the Ivory Soap girl; seeing a golden marketing opportunity, they referred to Chambers in advertising for the film as the "99 and 44/100% pure" girl. Chambers was quoted at the time as saying the film would "sell a lot more soap"; Proctor & Gamble, the makers of Ivory, saw things somewhat differently. They fired Chambers from her Ivory job, and went the extra step of recalling all existing product and marketing literature bearing her likeness, destroying it and not returning Ivory to the shelves until they had found a suitable replacement (to whom they likely explained upfront that taking a role in a porn film wasn't a good idea).

Behind the Green Door, along with Deep Throat, which was released the same year, and Boys in the Sand, released the previous year, were seen as the vanguard of the Porno chic era. By taking the extra time and effort to create actual storylines and shoot films that were appealing to the eye for more than just purposes of arousal, the creative talent behind these films made it, in a very real sense, safe for couples to go to a hardcore film. Behind the Green Door was seen less as a vehicle merely for masturbation and more an exploration of sexual imagery, an attempt to entice both sexes to explore these comparatively-sumptuous visualizations of fantasies and not feel as if they had to be ashamed of anything. And by providing actual plots, Behind the Green Door and its fellow Porno chic innovators provided critics something to discuss other than, say, sexual positions, in reviews, thus providing mainstream newspapers with cover for printing reviews of hardcore films. During this era, it was also common practice to accept advertising for X-rated films in mainstream newspapers - just three years before, the winner of the Best Picture Oscar was an X-rated film, after all - and Behind the Green Door benefited from this openness.

Its lead actress, however, did not benefit as much as she had initially imagined. While Chambers received good reviews for her performance, the screenwriter made the unusual choice of not giving Chambers' character any dialogue, so it was difficult to make any judgments about the level of her acting ability, if any. This, in turn, didn't' provide her with any actual product to which she could refer producers or directors of mainstream films, no scene work to indicate her range.

Not that Chambers didn't benefit at all from starring in Behind the Green Door. On the contrary, she embarked on an impressive adult-film career, becoming a legend in the adult-film world and, thanks to the cultural significance of Behind the Green Door, a recognized name outside of the porn industry as well. And she did manage to star in at least one mainstream film; David Cronenberg's 1977 zombie film Rabid. Well, as mainstream as Cronenberg gets, that is.

Chambers also became very savvy at marketing herself, and came to understand that she could represent a kind of brand in the hardcore and softcore porn industries; her name on a project could give it an imprimatur of sorts, guaranteeing the audience a certain level of wit and intelligence to the project, in addition to the naked people having sex. And Chambers had quite the thriving straight-to-video adult-film career, well into her later years. Still, she made it clear in interviews that although she had certainly achieved a type of fame, it wasn't really the career she wanted, and not one she recommended to others; she was once quoted as saying she found it a "heartbreaking" vocation that left her "feeling empty inside".

Marilyn Chambers was relatively young when she passed away on April 9th. She suffered a cerebral hemorrhage due to an aneurysm just ten days before her 58th birthday.

Dom DeLuise

Dom DeLuise was larger than life.

No, that isn't a shot at his portly frame, but rather an appreciation of his personality and joie de vivre. The man born Dominick DeLuise in Brooklyn, New York went through life playing to the back of the house and thoroughly enjoying whatever it was he was doing, and that made watching him enjoyable as well.

DeLuise learned from an early age that one way to fit in was to make people laugh. Finding he had natural talent, he operated as class clown but also took an interest in performing on stage. Often cast in school plays throughout elementary and middle school, DeLuise attended New York's prestigious High School for the Performing Arts, but surprisingly, didn't pursue a theatre arts degree when he went to college; instead, he studied biology at Tufts University in Boston. Fortunately for the comedy world, DeLuise discovered he wasn't really all that interested in becoming a biologist, as performing still held the top spot in his heart and mind, so he left school and took an opportunity to apprentice at the Cleveland Playhouse, a repertory company. While there, he played a variety of roles in a variety of productions, ranging from Guys and Dolls to School for Scandal. He also won his first television role on a local children's show, Tip Top Clubhouse.

After gaining experience in Cleveland, DeLuise was ready to head for home and see if he could continue to find work in New York. He quickly got work in Tinker's Toyhouse as the eponymous toymaker, and also began appearing off-Broadway; after receiving rave notices for his appearances in the 1961 musical revue An Evening with Harry Stoones, DeLuise made it to Broadway, starring as Muffin T Raggamuffin in The Student Gypsy, or the Prince of Liederkrantz.

As is often the case with those who make a reputation in New York theatre, Hollywood came calling before long, although ironically, DeLuise was first cast in a rare serious role, as a high-strung flyer in the nuclear-war drama Fail Safe. Though DeLuise received good reviews, it would be some time before another serious role came his way. Instead, DeLuise was next cast in the Doris Day vehicle The Glass-Bottom Boat as an incompetent spy, and became the best thing about a not-very-good film. The great critic Vincent Canby, in fact, called DeLuise's performance out as the lone bright spot in the entire film, and since success breeds success in Hollywood, DeLuise saw more film and television roles come his way. Strong supporting roles in some other mediocre comedy films followed, as well as a number of guest-star turns on popular TV series, before DeLuise began the first of several life-long film collaborations by being cast in Mel Brooks' follow-up to The Producers, The 12 Chairs. Not only did Brooks cast DeLuise in a number of his films, but the two shared a friendship off-camera; Brooks often said of DeLuise that whenever he cast his friend in one of his films, he automatically added two more days to the shooting schedule, because DeLuise always kept everyone laughing on-set. Among their other collaborations were Blazing Saddles, History of the World, Part I and Robin Hood: Men in Tights. Gene Wilder also cast DeLuise in many of his projects, including The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes' Smarter Brother, The World's Greatest Lover and Haunted Honeymoon.

DeLuise had a number of friends from a wide variety of backgrounds with whom he performed frequently, with all of these collaborations making both parties look good. In 1972, when legendary singer Dean Martin had his summer variety hour, DeLuise was booked on the show to do his Dominick the Great character. DeLuise played an incompetent magician who, despite the fact that all his tricks were going wrong, seemed convinced that somehow, he'd be able to pull off the act in the end. He greeted every failure, every bungled trick, with the same fixed smile, the same air of flop-sweat, and then a redoubled effort to get it right the next time, though of course he never did. Martin enjoyed the appearance so much that, when his show was brought back in the fall, he brought DeLuise on as a regular performer, which made him a popular guest on other variety shows of the era as well. DeLuise also found himself included in Martin's legendary celebrity roasts, so funny did the singer find him.

Another perhaps unusual friend and collaborator was Burt Reynolds. Though one would not think the two would hit it off, or even work well together, both were true; Reynolds could be quite slyly funny himself, and he liked to surround himself with people whose company he enjoyed. The pair were in a string of films, including Cannonball Run, Smokey and the Bandit II, and The End, with DeLuise very nearly stealing that last film out from under its star. In later years, DeLuise would direct shows at Reynolds' Jupiter, Florida dinner theatre.

That Dom DeLuise was often the best thing in a lot of bad movies said a great deal about his immense comedy talent (and perhaps a bit about his not having the ability to pick the best projects). The same was true of the many attempts by TV networks to find him a fitting vehicle; though his performances were enjoyable, the vehicles were not, and even being in a variety setting wasn't sufficient to give him a successful headlining series. Not that any of this mattered; DeLuise continued to work steadily throughout his life, moving easily from film to television to the stage to animated roles; his vocal talents were in great demand, especially by animated filmmaker Don Bluth, who used DeLuise in the Fievel series as well as The Secret of NIMH and, along with his friend Birth Reynolds, in All Dogs Go to Heaven.

In fact, perhaps the one area that DeLuise did not see much work in was in serious projects; though his few forays, most notably the Anne Bancroft-directed Fatso, showed that DeLuise was as skillful with pathos as he was with mirth, he was not offered many dramatic roles. In terms of the gravitas of a particular form of entertainment, however, DeLuise did show great aptitude in one of the most serious of the arts, and one that most who knew him from films and television would likely not have guessed: an opera lover throughout his life, DeLuise did several non-singing roles, including as the jailer, Frosch, in Mozart's Die Fledermaus, a role he played in four separate revivals at the Met; and as L'Opinion Publique, the skirt role in Offenbach's Orpheus in the Underworld, for the Los Angeles Opera Company. Being a rotund Italian, it perhaps comes as no surprise that DeLuise was a good cook, another outlet for his creativity, and one he also shared with the public at large, writing two cookbooks and making appearances on several shows demonstrating his favorite recipes and giving cooking advice to viewers. He also employed his writing skills in children's literature, writing seven children's books.

But though DeLuise may have made peace with his corpulence, it sadly had the effect it does on most mortals, causing him a host of health problems, including diabetes. Near the end of his life, his health began to suffer dramatically, and he began to suffer kidney failure and respiratory problems as complications of diabetes and high blood pressure, and it was this that led him to shuffle off this mortal coil on May 4th at the age of 75.

David Carradine

Scions from a couple of acting dynasties passed away this year.

Born John Arthur Carradine, David later changed his first name in order to avoid being confused with his famous father John Carradine. And though the elder Carradine had an awesomely lengthy career in films, David himself didn't initially evince much interest in following in his father's footsteps. Indeed, when he attended college in San Francisco, he majored in music composition and theory, and though writing music for the drama department's annual reviews did awaken the actor in his blood, his musical training would remain with him throughout his life; he was an accomplished pianist, guitarist and flutist; possessed a pleasant singing voice; wrote music for some of his films; and played in the band Cosmic Rescue Team with his brother, Robert (also an accomplished musician, as is another brother, Keith).

After dropping out of college and then serving a stint in the Army, Carradine's acting career began to take off; he did a number of guest-star roles on a variety of TV shows, including Wagon Train, The Virginian and The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, before making his film debut in Taggart. Carradine would go back and forth between movies and episodic television for the next several years; in addition to more guest-star roles, Carradine also landed his first starring series, Shane; however, the series ran less than one season. Carradine also began to get bigger roles in bigger films, including Martin Scorsese's major studio debut, Boxcar Bertha; other films from this period include Heaven with a Gun and The McMasters.

In February 1972, Carradine did a TV movie in which he played a half-Chinese, half-Caucasian Shaolin monk traveling in the American West, who seemed always to be put into the position of having to depart from his preferred pacifism and deal with some redneck or another with a bit of martial arts. Whether originally intended as a pilot or not, Kung Fu proved to be very popular, so it became a series that fall, and David Carradine found his signature role in Kwai Chang Caine. Its mixture of Eastern philosophy, kung-fu artistry and the Western conventions of the good guys beating the bad guys and the strong defending the weak, made it a popular series, and one that opened a lot of Americans up not only to martial arts films, but to learning the various martial arts disciplines as well. The series proved so popular that it probably would've continued beyond three seasons had Carradine not left to pursue his movie career. As an interesting side note, though Carradine knew nothing about martial arts, nor did he learn kung fu or any of the other martial arts disciplines during filming of the sires, he began to study kung fu after the series ended. He eventually became skilled enough in kung fu to consider himself "an evangelist", but not a master. This led him to an interest in the martial arts of Tai Chi and Qi Gong; he studied this in earnest, and in the 2000s, felt proficient enough to make a series of instructional videos in these disciplines.

When he returned to big screen, Carradine began to get more starring roles in films; his first being as one of the top competitors in the ultimate bloodsport Death Race 2000; followed by one of his most critically-acclaimed roles as legendary folk singer Woody Guthrie in Bound for Glory, in which he performed many of Guthrie's songs on the soundtrack. Though nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Drama, and receiving a National Board of Review award as Best Actor, Carradine was not included in the six Academy Awards for which the film was nominated. Still, his performance in the film led to other high-profile roles and exemplary performances; his films over the next few years included The Serpent's Egg, Gray Lady Down, Deathsport and Circle of Iron; he was also part of the ensemble cast of The Long Riders, along with his brothers Robert and Keith, and three other sets of brothers: Randy and Dennis Quaid, James and Stacey Keach, and Christopher and Nicholas Guest. The story of the James gang, told from a sympathetic viewpoint, was hailed as a sterling example of Western filmmaking and ensemble acting; what could have been a gimmick in using several sets of acting siblings to portray the sets of outlaw siblings in the James gang instead turned out to be an inspired bit of casting, adding an air of authenticity to the proceedings.

Carradine was also not absent from the small screen; he had a major role in the TV miniseries North and South, for which he received a Golden Globe nomination, and went on to appear in its sequel, the imaginatively-titled North and South, Book II. He also appeared in the TV movies Gauguin, the Savage; Tom Horn; a TV adaptation of The Bad Seed; and a movie based on the Kung Fu series, surprisingly called Kung Fu: The Movie.

As the ‘80s wore into the ‘90s, however, Carradine, though still continuing to act for both the silver and small screens, saw something of a decline in terms of the type of roles and types of projects he was offered; it seemed either the roles were insignificant, the films were straight-to-video, or sometimes both. It is perhaps no surprise, then, that Carradine decided to return to the role that made him a household name, Caine in Kung Fu. After a TV movie, Kung Fu: The Legend Continues, garnered a respectable audience, a series by the same title quickly followed; this time, the series lasted four years before ending, and once again, Carradine saw his acting career go into decline. He was cast only in guest-star roles on TV shows or small parts in films that didn't garner a lot of attention.

The downward trajectory of Carradine's career might have continued had Quentin Tarantino not cast him as the titular assassin in his two-part Kill Bill films. His bravura turn as "The Snakecharmer", assassin extraordinaire, garnered much critical acclaim and a fair amount of Oscar buzz; though the expected nomination didn't surface, the film nevertheless revitalized Carradine's career, and he was once again in demand for major supporting roles in mainstream projects, and more of them as well. He continued to enjoy his career renaissance through the rest of the 2000s, when he unexpectedly died on June 4th, while in Thailand working on a film. Though the initial reports distressingly proclaimed David Carradine a suicide, this snap-judgment by the tabloids made little sense to Carradine's family, or just about anyone else, for that matter; after autopsies performed by the Thai authorities and by an independent pathologist hired by the Carradine family, the official cause of death was ruled accidental asphyxiation, most likely occurring during a session of autoerotic asphyxiation.

In Passing: 2009, Part II

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